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I’ve built two different iterations of the Sonic Tonic and absolutely love what they do to my tone, majorly in love. Just finished the second board I had and built it with the 3pdt Buffer and wow, incredible.
My only issue is that both boards I’ve built are insanely noisy. Is there anything I can tweak to help mediate this or am I out of luck and this is just part of the circuit? I’m tempted to build a noise gate just for the Sonic Tonic.
I suggest you do some “noise troubleshooting”.
I do not offer a single circuit I would consider noisy.
The first thing is to supply the sonic tonic only with 2 “tested” good quality cables (no pedal boards etc). Only guitar -> Cable-> Pedal -> Cable -> AMP. Nothing else in between. Only power the sonic tonic with a battery. You can use a battery strap with a 9v battery connector on one side and a 2.1mm negative tip on the other.
This eliminates a ton of contenders for introducing noise and since batteries cannot produce noise then it will be very revealing.
There were two threads about noise here in the last couple weeks and both ended up being noisy power supplies. That of course is only one of the many reasons to have noise in your setup. The fact that you built two pedals with identical noise either means you have an error in the exact same place on both or there is an outside contributor.
If your pedal is still noisy after the battery test we are going to need some clear pictures.
Sounds good Barry, appreciate the reply. I tried multiple power supply’s and the hissing still persisted. Waiting on an order for 9v-2.1mm and will test with that when I receive it like you recommended above.
This is the 2nd build, same noise issue as the 1st. I socketed some components on this build to test some different components.
While you are waiting I will point out a few things.
The potentiometers are in the wrong orientation. The square pad as well as the tiny silkscreen 1 indicates Lug 1 of the potentiometer belongs there. So you will need to desolder those and rotate them to match. Currently, the potentiometers will work in the opposite manner than they were designed to work. Once rotated this will then place the pots sitting under the board effectively giving you much-needed room inside the enclosure. You will also need some type of pot protection to keep the metal pot from contacting the solder side of the board.
I am not really keen on the electrolytic capacitors sitting up in the air like little antennas. I believe they will benefit from a secure soldered connection to the board. This could also be a cause for your noise.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for pointing out the rearranged pots, old habit from another pcb supplier that I need to pay more attention to when building other company’s pcbs.
My 1st Sonic Tonic is all completely soldered (except socketed ICs) and boxed, same issue with noise.
<p style=”padding-left: 40px;”>Will do more testing when the mail comes. Appreciate all the help greatly.</p>
The photos are only of build #2 of the Sonic Tonic, no pictures of the 1st, that one is boxed up.
I’ll definitely check that out tomorrow when I get a chance Billy, hard to tell. Going to desolder the pots and turn them the right way around as well.
Turns out of course you were right from the get Barry, no surprise there.
Ran all the tests after desoldering the pots and the static was coming from my gear. For some reason, not even my high gain pedals amplify this static noise, they are always dead silent.
I put the Sonic Tonic in front of everything and it’s happy at home there.
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